Efficiency mass leveling until WOTLK
Before you start reading the block that follows, let me say that I wrote this as much for me, to outline my thoughts, as for others to see it and comment on it/pick it apart. I'll warn you, its long, and probably really boring. Here it goes...
I'm considering starting over. When I was leveling my shamans here, they were my 3rd characters I brought to 70. And it was tough. The toughness of it was softened by the novelty of everything dying so fast, but still I felt a little stressed. When I hit 70 with them I knew there was no way I was going to level another group to 70 in the foreseeable future-- the amount of time and effort involved just wasn't appealing. But now with this RAF offer (yes, this is another RAF-based thread), I feel the urge to go for it, and level as many groups as I can before WOTLK.
Here's my reasoning:
1. 300% xp on an already softened trek 1-60 will make it more enjoyable. I used to get frustrated by how slow it was (I know, I know, many other MMOs are even slower).
2. If I was gearing my 70s instead of leveling new characters, when WOTLK comes out, all that grinding would be made obsolete (thus time wasted).
3. I really would love to have more different groups/characters. There are so many classes I would love to try.
And so, I have begun to undertake a great deal of planning. What groups do I want to get there? How will I do it? How can I best use those bonus levels? and so forth.
Characters I would like to have:
1. the option of having any healer and tank combination with any ranged-DPS team.
2. at least one of every class
3. The option to have a party 4 of any ranged dps, and 5 of any healer/caster hybrid (shamans, priests, druids)
The challenge here is finding group compositions will fit into the above conditions while being effective at leveling. First off, the most logical way to work the RAF system would be: Account 1 refers account 2 refers account 3 refers account 4 refers account 5-- thus each account 1 through 4 would receive equal bonus levels, while account 5 receives none (a regrettable necessity).
Here is what I have come up with: in all cases, the first character mentioned is account 1, and the last is account 5.
(H) means I would gear it with healing gear
(D) means I would gear it with dps gear (ranged)
(T) means I would gear it with tanking gear
1. Time-tested shamans and paladin tank setup. Highly effective in pve.
paladin (T/H)
shaman (D)
shaman (D)
shaman (D)
shaman (D/H)
2. Hunters and shaman healer, thus allowing a 5-shaman team as well. I have wanted to try this for a while... 4 pets seem really nice.
shaman (H/D)
hunter (D)
hunter (D)
hunter (D)
hunter (D)
3. All-druid team. This also seemed like an interesting makeup, as it could work as a stealth-team. I forsee the no ooc rez to be a be annoyance though. Having both top and bottom druid with tanking and healing gear provides a measure of flexibility. Now any of the previous groups can use a druid as a tank or healer.
druid (T/H/D)
druid (D)
druid (D)
druid (D)
druid (H/T/D)
4. Priest w/ Warlocks, heavy shadow team. Another team I've wanted to try. The apparent synergy between shadow-priest (or even holy priest) with warlocks seems really powerful. Additionally, this opens up the priest for the other teams as healer (if so desired). The way it is laid out, it allows the opportunity for paladin-warlocks-priest for instances later on.
warlock (D)
warlock (D)
warlock (D)
warlock (D)
priest (H/D)
5. 4x priests. I am not convinced of the viability of an all-priest team. While their sustained-damage capabilities would likely be impressive, they are too squishy for instances later on. Rather than bother with a full 5-man team, later on I could borrow the priest from the 4-warlock team to have 5 of them, thus allowing me to experiment with the idea. This team would be leveled with bonus levels.
priest (H/D)
priest (D)
priest (D)
priest (D)
6. 4x mages. Partial group. I will be using bonus levels to get this group to 60.
mage (D)
mage (D)
mage (D)
mage (D)
7. Conglomerate melee. I don't cherish the idea of leveling a melee team, and as I said Iwould like to have one of each class if only for solo play, so the odd men out will fit here. This will also be using bonus levels to get to 60. Additionally, this opens up a warrior as a tank for other groups.
warrior (D/T)
rogue (D)
paladin (D/T)
shaman (D-enh) <- any class could go here, it is a free space (DK?)
And that is it. Seems like a lot! 7 teams! But really it isn't with the bonus levels and 3x xp. Now the question is: how best to level them? First I would only be leveling them to 60. This works for several reasons: (oh god not another list 8| )
1) 300% xp stops at 60.
2) By stopping at 60 and playing other characters, it allows rested xp to stack up.
3) When WOTLK it is believed that 60-70 will be made 30% or so easier.
So, let's say I take 4 groups to 60 (equal to taking 1 and 1/3 group to 60 pre-RAF-offer), the bonus levels from them will take 2 more groups there. That leaves one group. But! What if I stretch the levels? 120 bonus levels spread over 3 groups = 40 bonus levels per group. Leveling a group to 20 would take no time at all... a few hours at most! So I would take all of the odd teams (5, 6, 7) and level them the old fashioned way to 20, then use the levels to top them out at 60.
How long would this take total, for all those 60s?
It takes, what, no more than 5 hours to achieve level 20 now, and in the old days it took maybe 6 days to get to 60. 4x 1/3 of 6 days = 9 days. So for under 10 days played I would get no less than 7 groups (a total of 32 characters) to 60, allowing me to have any combination of healer/ranged-dps/tank, or ranged-dps/healer, as well as at least one character of every class.
Additionally, by the time this all gets done, the first few characters I got to 60 would be on full rested xp, ready to blast through the first few levels of outlands. Even better, WOTLK may have come out by then, making outlands even easier!
Now that you have ready that block of text (TL/DR), I would like to hear from you-- flaws in my plans, improvements I could make, better team composition, whatever! I would really appreciate any feedback on this.
